David PierceEye-Fi Mobile X2 (With Direct Mode)If you own a digital camera and a smartphone, the Eye-Fi Mobile X2 card is the perfect link between the two, letting you wirelessly transfer your photos from your camera to your computer or phone&#151;even when there's no Wi-Fi to be found.

Eye-Fi Mobile X2 (With Direct Mode)

Works with any camera that accepts SD cards. Simple to set up and use. Can send photos to smartphones even without a Wi-Fi network. Fast, automatic transfers. Transfers full-resolution photos.

Cons

Camera battery life suffers with card use. Most settings require a computer. Only transfers to one source at a time.

Bottom Line

If you own a digital camera and a smartphone, the Eye-Fi Mobile X2 card is the perfect link between the two, letting you wirelessly transfer your photos from your camera to your computer or phoneeven when there's no Wi-Fi to be found.

When you go out to shoot photos, there's always a tradeoff. You can opt for convenience, shooting with the cell phone that's probably in your pocket anyway—but the quality of your shots takes a hit. If sharper shots are what you're after, you'll have to carry around a dedicated digital camera, and sacrifice all the sharing and social-networking options that cell phones allow. With the Eye-Fi Mobile X2 8GB SD card ($79.99 direct), there's less trading: it lets you wirelessly upload photos from your camera to your computer or smartphone, or straight to the Web. And, thanks to a new Direct Mode, you can transfer pictures to your smartphone even when there's no Wi-Fi connection available. You'll still have to carry a phone and a camera, but with the Mobile X2 you'll get better-quality pictures, and you'll be able to put them on all your favorite networks instantly. For the social shutterbug, it's a must-have accessory, and easily earns an Editors' Choice.

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The Eye-Fi Mobile X2 supports 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. Its an 8GB card, which can theoretically hold 4,000 photos or three hours of video. Through Eye-Fi's Endless Memory feature, though, the card has infinite storage: If it's connected to a Wi-Fi network, it can upload pictures automatically and then delete them off the camera, giving you an endless amount of storage as you shoot.

The Mobile X2's basic features don't differ much from the Eye-Fi Pro X2 ($149.99, 4 stars). It's the same, seamless shoot-and-transfer process for photos and video that Eye-Fi excels at. With the Pro, though, you'll get RAW support, and geo-tagging and a hotspot mode are built in (they're each $29.99 add-ons to the Mobile X2). Check out the Eye-Fi Pro X2 review for Eye-Fi basics—here, I'll focus on Direct Mode.

Setting Up and Shooting Since Eye-Fi cards are compatible with so many cameras (basically any model that accepts an SD card), set-up requires a computer. When you first pop the card into your Mac or PC (if your computer doesn't have an SD card reader, there's one in the box), you'll be prompted to install an application called Eye-Fi Center, which is the computer-based hub for your card. This is where you customize your Eye-Fi experience: You can choose the wireless networks the card uses, and select folder destinations, for example. There's a simple wizard that walks you through much of the setup—creating an account, connecting to wireless networks, and everything else took only about 10 minutes.

Direct Mode Direct Mode is the major upgrade inside the Mobile X2. (Actually, the feature is available as a firmware update on any Eye-Fi X2 card, but the Mobile X2 is the first to launch with Direct Mode.) In a nutshell, it allows for wireless transfer from your camera to your iPhone, iPad, or Android device even when there's no Wi-Fi available.

When you enable Direct Mode in the Eye-Fi Center, the card will first look for one of its supported Wi-Fi networks; if it doesn't find one, it will create its own using the Wi-Fi in your iOS or Android device and the wireless baked into the card. (First you need to install the free Eye-Fi app for iOS or Android, and connect your device to the Eye-Fi's network.) But once you're set up, you can start sending pictures and video right away.

I tested the Direct Mode connection using a Sony Alpha A55 D-SLR, and though there were occasional hiccups, the process was generally very smooth. I shot a lot of pictures without being connected to the phone, and when the connection became active the card sent the whole lot right away. I interrupted the transfer mid-photo, and it just picked up where it left off the next time. I occasionally had the connection inexplicably go away, and a photo wouldn't transfer, but if I either waited a minute or two or turned Wi-Fi on and off, the transfer always worked the second time.

One of the nice things about the Mobile X2, as with all Eye-Fi cards, is that it transfers photos at full size instead of compressing them to save space—other accessories, like the Olympus Penpal (PP-1) ($79.99, 3 stars) make images much smaller to make transfers faster. The Mobile X2 will even transfer video, though the time required for that added up fast, taking a few minutes for even a few-second video. Unfortunately, though, it only links to one source at a time; I found yourself flipping back and forth between transfers to your computer and your phone, which was a bit annoying.

Eye-Fi AppsThe free Eye-Fi app, native for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch and Android, is useful but barebones. Photos coming from your camera automatically show up in a gallery view in the app (you can see their progress as they're transferred), and you can flip through them or share them to various social networks. Photos also get saved to your device's native photo viewer (in my case, the Gallery app on my Android-powered Samsung Fascinate), and I found myself more often using the native apps and various social applications, like Instagram, Picplz and Hipstamatic, that can access those galleries.

There's really only downside to the Eye-Fi proposition: Your camera's battery life takes a hit when you use the card. In my tests, it wasn't terrible, but I definitely noticed the battery draining faster than it would normally. There are a select number of "connected cameras" that are optimized for Eye-Fi cards, but the list isn't very long. Odds are your camera's battery life is going to drop a bit.

If you're not satisfied with the quality of images from your cell phone, and you want to send shots from your camera right to Facebook, Twitter, or other social sites, the Eye-Fi Mobile X2 card with Direct Mode is the perfect solution. It's a seamless way to take great photos, and get them onto your cell phone wherever you are so you can share them instantly.

David Pierce is a junior analyst on the PCMag consumer electronics reviews team. He’s a recent graduate of the University of Virginia, and got his journalistic experience (and a tech itch) working with David Pogue at the New York Times and interning at Wired. When not writing and editing, you’ll find David either playing Ultimate Frisbee, extolling the virtues of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee (it''s way better than Starbucks), or avoiding doing his laundry. And probably tweeting about it allhe’s @piercedavid....
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